Just Come Over

by James, Rosalind

  “Could you bring me the check, please?” Rhys asked. “Or better yet . . .” He reached into his back pocket, which involved some straining of the shirt over his chest that the waiter eyed as much as Zora did, then pulled out a credit card and handed it over. “I’ve got a car waiting,” he told the bloke. “So—quick as you can. And if you have a back door . . .”

  The waiter looked around, then said, “Oh. Of course,” and took off.

  “What?” Zora asked, looking around herself.

  “Somebody gearing up to come over for a chat,” Rhys said. “Telling me we shouldn’t have lost, and what I’d better do in Aussie to keep it from happening again.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Going out must be awkward.”

  He smiled, the hard planes of his face easing with it, though his eyes still burned. “Not in France, so you could say that I’m just not used to it anymore. And it’s not something you can resent, not when it comes along with the thing you’ve wanted most in your life. But I don’t want any of it tonight. I want to go out the back door and get in the car with you. If that’s what you want.”

  “That’s . . .” She cleared her throat. “That’s what I want.”

  This time, Rhys didn’t open the front passenger door. Instead, he opened the back door, and when she slid in, he slid in after her.

  She thought, Touch me. Please. Now.

  The driver turned the key, then looked at them in the rearview mirror and said, “Fasten your seatbelt, please.”

  Oh. Zora almost laughed, and then she didn’t.

  One red light after another, the car gliding through quiet Monday-night streets, then merging onto the motorway, and Rhys still didn’t say anything. He didn’t even touch her hand.

  Did she have this all wrong? Was it the most massive case of wishful thinking in the history of time? Or, possibly, just alcohol-induced lust? Food-induced, music-induced, hopelessly-spoiled-induced, soaked-undies-induced lust? She’d tumbled into bed with somebody the first time out exactly once in her life, and she’d been drinking too much then, too. That had been Dylan, and look how that had turned out.

  Rhys had quoted the Song of bloody Solomon to her. Like he’d meant it, too. What was he doing that for, if he didn’t want to touch her?

  She shot a look at him. He was leaning a little forward, his hands on his knees. Looking like he was on the bench in the sixtieth minute, and the team was down by ten. Like he was waiting to get the call, knowing he couldn’t go in until then, but with every hard muscle tensed in anticipation of the moment when he’d finally run onto the field, make that first contact, and start earning the win.

  He turned his head and looked at her. They were on the motorway, it was dark in the back of the car, and she couldn’t see the expression on his face.

  “Wait,” he said.

  She shivered. Same as before, all the way down her body, and he was still watching.

  Titirangi, now. Around the roundabout and down her road. One street. Two. Three. She unzipped her purse and took out her keys, then tugged the zip closed. It wouldn’t go. Her hands were shaking. She left it open.

  The car pulled into the driveway, and Rhys said, “Thanks.”

  “No worries,” the man behind the wheel said. “Good night.”

  She got out on her side, and heard the thunk of the door as Rhys got out on his. The stripe of light washed across her as the car reversed. The engine noise faded, and the light was gone, and she kept walking.

  A hand on her arm, stopping her, turning her. Then his hand was at the back of her neck, his other one was underneath her, and he was lifting her with one arm and taking her mouth.

  It wasn’t anything like the first time. It was hunger. It was greed. His mouth slanting over hers, his tongue licking into her, the taste of chocolate and spice swirling into her head. Pinot Noir, she thought fuzzily, but then she couldn’t think at all, because she was almost off her feet, he was bending her back over his arm, his hand was in her hair, tugging her head back, and his other hand was around her upper thigh. It was so big and so warm, and his fingers gripped her hard.

  That hand, that mouth were all she could think about. All she could feel.

  Another of those full-body shudders, and he lifted his mouth from hers and said, “Keys.”

  She couldn’t remember. Then she realized that they were in her hand, digging into him, probably, where she’d been gripping his back. She held them up, and he took them from her, took her hand, and headed up the walk.

  When he had the key in the lock, she put a palm against the door and said, “Rhys. Wait.”

  She didn’t want to say it. She’d never wanted anything less. But it was the last chance, and the smoke alarm was shrieking.

  “Once,” she said.

  His hand was still on the key. He didn’t turn it. Instead, he turned his head to look at her. Slowly. “Pardon?”

  “Tonight,” she said. “Because I want it so much. I know it’s the wrong thing, and I’m sure you do, too, but . . . I can’t help it. I’ve never been able to help it. Tonight, because I can’t do anything else. But we both know it’s wrong, and I can’t, anymore. I can’t, with the lying. So just tonight.”

  A long moment, and he said, “No.”

  “Rhys.” She tried to laugh, but it wouldn’t come out. “You know how to do one night. I know you do.”

  “How?”

  “Uh . . . Casey’s mum? Most of your life experiences? Dylan shared more than you may know.”

  “And that’s the same as you and me?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  Two seconds. Three. “Judge me for the man I am,” he said. “Not the man I used to be.”

  She hauled in a breath. “I want to. It’s all I want. But I can’t do it anymore. I can’t live with wondering what’s true, and what’s a lie. But I need it tonight. Please.”

  His chest lifted and fell with his breath, and the hiss of distant cars, the rustle of wind in the palms was the only sound in the dark night. “No,” he said, and picked up her hand, and she thought, Yes. Finally. Please.

  He dropped the keys into her hand, curled her fingers around them, then turned and strode down the steps. Up the walk. Down the drive.

  Gone.

  She almost went after him. She didn’t. What would she say?

  This was the right choice. She knew it. It just didn’t feel like it. She’d been so ready to do it. Or to be more exact: she’d felt like she couldn’t go another minute without doing it. She’d been so unwilling to say anything to slow it down. Which was exactly like every other time in her life, when her insistent body had overridden her cautious mind. She was supposed to be wiser now, though. She’d meant to be. She had been.

  So why did it feel so bad?

  She went into the house, turned on the kitchen light, and slipped her shoes off. She had to put her hand against the wall to do it. She wasn’t exactly drunk, but she wasn’t exactly sober, either.

  The roof creaked, the refrigerator motor turned on with a click and a hum, the lino was cold under her bare feet, and she shivered in the night air. She got her phone out of her purse, texted Hayden, Help. And waited.

  No answer. Monday night. Nine-forty-five. Why wasn’t he answering? She pressed the button to call him, thinking, Pick up. I need to talk to you. I can’t do this alone. Not anymore. Not again.

  One ring. Two.

  No. This was the wrong answer.

  She pressed the button again, and the phone stopped ringing. She clicked on an app instead, then entered the address.

  Wait time: 20 minutes.

  She couldn’t wait twenty minutes. She couldn’t wait five minutes. But she’d had too much to drink. There was no way she could drive.

  Judge me for the man I am, not the man I used to be.

  She grabbed her keys, pulled her shoes on again, and slammed the door on her way out.

  It was nine hundred meters between Zora’s house and his. His stride was close to a meter long. Call it a thousand
steps. He took them fast, and then, when that wasn’t enough, he ran them.

  He wasn’t thinking, or if he was, he wasn’t letting the hornet-buzz of thoughts land. He didn’t want to see them. He sure as hell didn’t want to listen to them.

  Inside the house, he took off his shoes and socks, his movements jerky and savage, then stripped off his jacket and threw it across a kitchen chair on the way out to the deck.

  The trees below were a patch of dappled green darkness like jungle camouflage. Beyond them, lights shone gold from houses and streets, until you reached the strip of absolute black that was Manakau Harbour. And he was burning with a fury that couldn’t be denied anymore. At Zora, for saying it, for believing it, even though it was what he’d told her to believe. At himself, for not telling her, and not being willing to live with the consequences, once he’d made his choice. And, above all, at Dylan, who’d taken a laughing, excited, beautiful girl of twenty and turned her into a woman who couldn’t believe.

  He wanted to hit his brother, to shout at him, to let him know exactly what he thought of him. But Dylan was dead.

  I’m not going to take you with me when I get rich and get out of here. I’m going to leave you alone.

  Go in the house, baby. You’re useless.

  He lowered his head to his hands and rested it there, pressing his forehead into the darkness, and breathed. He breathed because he couldn’t hit anything, and because he couldn’t have the one thing he needed most, and he’d needed it for so long. And then he stood up, arched his back, opened his mouth and let the pain out.

  “Aaarrrrgggghhhh.”

  The howl reverberated in the night. Two doors down, a dog barked, and another joined in. Rhys wanted to bark, too. He wanted to bay at the moon until the frustration and the fury and the pain were gone.

  A musical chime. Not his phone. The doorbell.

  Wonderful. He’d sounded like he was dying, probably violently, and the neighbors were checking. He stood still and waited. If he didn’t answer, maybe they’d think it had come from another house. The last thing he wanted to do was open his door, show them who he was tonight, and have them see him, his shirt damp, his hair unkempt from where he’d grabbed it, and think it was about the loss. That he was wallowing in it, that he couldn’t take the learnings and apply them to the next time. That he couldn’t pick himself up again.

  That he wasn’t a winner.

  Another chime. Doorbell again. He didn’t move. Go away. I can’t. I’m at the bloody, bitter end. I can’t.

  Another. Then three more.

  Bloody hell. He shoved off the acrylic railing, raked his hand through his hair again to smooth it, went to the door, got his Polite Face on, and opened it.

  Zora.

  Her hair was tousled, and she was breathing hard. Her hand was on her chest, and her other hand clutched her keys, the same way she’d done when he’d left her.

  She said, “You could . . . answer your door. And it’s uphill to your house. I didn’t realize . . . how much. Also, my feet hurt.”

  He looked down. Chocolate-brown suede shoes with a strap swooping from the outside of the pointed toe, crossing the arch of her foot, and landing at the inside of her ankle, at that soft, sensitive spot where her pulse beat.

  “Did you walk?” he asked.

  “I ran.” She had her arms around herself. “Can I . . . come inside?”

  He stepped back, let her in, and shut the door, and she said, “Judge the man I see.”

  He wasn’t sure that was such a good idea anymore. “Yeh.”

  “I judge him, then. I see him. And I want him.”

  She couldn’t breathe before he kissed her. After that, she really couldn’t breathe.

  A second, and then she was tipping, and off her feet. Because he’d picked her up.

  “Rhys,” she said, and he said, “Yeh,” and headed down the stairs with her in his arms, past the kitchen, into the bedroom, where he got onto one knee on the bed, somehow while still holding her. Bloody hell, boy, she thought hazily, you’re that strong, and then he was setting her down. Gently.

  “Hang on,” he said, then turned and hit a switch, and a light came on from above the padded headboard, directly onto the spot where she lay.

  She said, “That might be too much.”

  He was frowning, his black brows drawn down, and she was swamped by a wave of pure lust. She wanted to put her tongue into the dimple in his chin. She wanted to lie over him, hold his head, and lick into his mouth. She wanted him to touch her. “Too much what?” he asked.

  “Light.”

  “Oh.” He smiled. Slowly. “Nah.”

  He was undoing shirt buttons, and she struggled onto her palm and turned to help him. He put out a hand and shoved her gently back down. “No,” he said. “Not this time.”

  She was watching him strip the shirt down his arms. It fell to the floor, and she didn’t care. The skin of his chest glistened, its dusting of black hair making her greedy to feel it. His tattoo covered the muscle of his shoulder and ended below his elbow, shining blue-black in the lamplight, and its spirals and chevrons had so much ground to cover.

  He came down on a palm over her, and she put a hand out and drew it down his body. Over the bunched muscle of his shoulder. Over the swell of pectoral muscle, then drifting over the flat brown nipple, which had him sucking in a breath. Over the ridges of abdomen, and on down the trail of black hair below his navel. She got her hand on his belt buckle, and he said again, “No.”

  “Then kiss me, boy,” she said, and he smiled. White teeth. Chin dimple. All of it. He moved down her body, got a hand around her ankle, and she tensed. He was going to just dive in, then, and not even get her dress off? She wanted that, but she didn’t. She wanted some more kissing. She wanted some slow, sweet loving.

  He slipped her shoe slowly off, dropped it over the side of the bed, raised her foot to his mouth, and kissed the inside of her ankle, and she forgot to think about what she wanted. His thumb traced over the delicate skin, then across her instep, and he kissed her there, looked up, his dark hair brushing his jaw, and said, “Dark red nail varnish. My favorite.”

  “Yes.” She barely knew what she was saying, because he’d set her foot down, touching her gently still, and was doing her other shoe, then running slow hands up her calves, then higher, his thumbs brushing the sensitive skin of her inner thighs, taking her skirt with them until it was all the way up her legs. He looked down at her and said, his chest rising and falling with his heavy breath, “You have the prettiest legs.”

  And then he came down over her, first on one palm, then the other, lowering himself down in the world’s slowest press-up, and finally going to his elbows, until at last, his body was over hers, and he was kissing her mouth. Slowly, still, sucking her lower lip into his mouth, licking into her, not in any hurry at all. And she had her hands on the shifting planes of his back, the indentation that was his spine, supported by all that muscle. A hand, then, on his jaw, as he continued to kiss her. Blackberry and chocolate and plum, rich, dark, and deep.

  Kisses sweeter than wine.

  He kissed her cheek, and then she felt the gentle brush of lips on her closed eyelid. “Behold, thou art fair, my love,” he murmured. “Behold, thou art fair, thou hast doves’ eyes.”

  Oh, God, she thought. Rhys. I am going to burn up and fly away.

  He brushed his lips over her other lid, then said, a laugh in his voice, “Sit up, though. I need this dress off.”

  She laughed herself, but it came out breathless. When she sat up and reached behind her for the zip, though, he brushed her fingers aside, got a hand on her shoulder, and lowered it himself, centimeter by centimeter. A brush of his lips at the top of her spine, and he was working his way on down as he pushed the bodice of the dress over her shoulders, down her arms. His hands stroked down with it, from her shoulders to her wrists, then came back up again, and he drew his hands down her back and sides, and sighed. She felt it, even though he was behind her.<
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  She said, “I’m taking it off. Take off your trousers.”

  “You’re anxious.” There was a smile in his voice now, and he hadn’t stopped kissing her spine. He was on his back, somehow, and she was still sitting up, feeling his hands gliding over her sides like he was learning her by touch, seeming in no hurry to get to the point.

  “I’ve waited three years to feel this,” she said.

  “And yet . . .” His lips had moved to that most sensitive spot, just above her tailbone. He had a hand on her belly, his fingers splayed, pulling her back against him, and if he thought that belly wasn’t flat enough, he wasn’t saying so. “As I’ve waited ten, I think I’ll take my time and do it right. I think I’ll make you remember it.”

  She shuddered. The edge of roughness in his voice. The idea that he’d been waiting for her, that he’d wanted her, had burned for her, maybe, with the same shameful desire she’d felt for him. The hunger in his hands, the brush of his lips against her skin, and the aching slowness with which he explored her.

  She said, “Not in a . . . rush? To get to the . . . good stuff?” It was a bit hard to breathe. Who knew that the small of your back could be so erotic?

  “Sweetheart.” There was that laugh again. “This is the good stuff.”

  “Oh.” It was a breath.

  He let go of her at last, though, and said, “All the same, let’s get this off you. Naked is good. Naked is brilliant. And if I get to take everything off myself? It’s even better.” She pulled the dress over her head and dropped it as he worked the trousers down his hips, and then she turned around and gave him a hand. She pulled fine woolen fabric over hair-roughened thighs corded with muscle, down long calves and oversized feet, and then she got her fingers under the silky waistband of black boxer briefs.

  Wait. Not yet. He’d waited? She’d waited, too. She lowered herself down, stroked her hands down his broad chest, teasingly, letting her fingers flirt with him, then kissed him through the soft fabric.